Having just finished Greg Mortenson's best-selling non-fiction book, Three Cups of Tea, I picked up the next book in the queue, Maya Angelou's, "I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings."
Poignant and poetic, one passage in particular jumped out at me:
As I ate she began the first of what we later called "my lessons in living." She said that I must always be intolerant of ignorance but understanding of illiteracy. That some people, unable to go to school, were more educated and even more intelligent than college professors. She encouraged me to listen carefully to what country people called mother wit. That in those homely sayings was couched the collective wisdom of generations.I am constantly reminded of this fact when I travel to Morocco and communicate with the artisans. They may be illiterate and from the rural countryside, but they have also been bestowed with a transcendental wisdom that reaches back to the annals of history.
Furthermore, since a written alphabet did not exist for the Amazigh language until just recently, the rural areas focused on two methods of transmitting stories: orally, and through their weavings. In other words, stories were literally woven into the rugs and carpets of a particular household. To those in the know, all sorts of information could be gleaned from the colors, patterns, and designs. In this way, these women were able to preserve a bit of their history in the warp and weft of their family's carpets.
At one point when I marveled over how intuitively Naima from Ait Daoud wove her carpets, she nonchalantly turned to me and said-- "You know how to read and write. We know how to weave."
Talk about mother wit and collective wisdom of generations...!
